Lloyd’s has posted a £1.89 billion profit for 2003 – 127% better than last year.

Almost as surprising as a big profit for the market is the fact that the announcement came just four months after the close of the calendar financial year, rather than the three-year lag that had been the tradition for more than 300 years.

It’s all part of the reforms being pushed along by CEO Nick Prettejohn, who said yesterday the results showed Lloyd’s is outperforming its global competitors – sorry, “international peer groups” – by concentrating on delivering underwriting profit.

“The task now is to maintain [this] progress,” he said. “Consistently good performance, balance sheet strength and attractive returns for capital providers can only be achieved if businesses write for profit and price risk adequately.”

Lloyd’s combined ratio for 2003 was 90.7%, compared with its estimates of 100.7% for US insurers and 101.4% for European insurers and reinsurers.

Lloyd’s was also at pains yesterday to caution that the three-year result may well be quite different. “Under annual accounting, the entire September 11 loss was accounted for in 2001 when the claims occurred. Under three-year accounting, the losses were split between 1999, 2000 and 2001, because they were the years in which the relevant policies were issued.”

It projects that the result for the 2001 year-of-account will be a loss of £2.37 billion, with 2002 registering a profit of £1.6 billion – the market’s first profit in six years.